LIVE: THE COLD ONE HUNDRED – 25/06/2010

It’s not easy growing up in the world The Cold One Hundred’s dark pop alludes to, with its tedium and disenchantment, but for source material, it doesn’t sell them short.

The hanging gloom of the Night & Day stage is a perfect setting for the live rendition of the quintet’s songs. Highlights include the yearning ‘Forgetting Was Easy For Scarlet’, wry ‘Failing’, and tonight’s closer, ‘Hedonist’, with its deadpan chorus about the protagonist smoking cigars rather than cigarettes after sex, vainly aspiring to unattainable glamour.

At times a little too close to their influences (most immediately, The Smiths and Morrissey), it would be disappointing if a band whose lyrics centre on the mundane, on unwillingness to venture from a particular ideal, were to back themselves into just such a corner. That said, it is all too easy to typecast new acts. The wisdom in The Cold One Hundred’s stated aim of writing songs that are ostensibly pop but nevertheless have substance suggests they do not want merely to replicate history.

Tonight’s show provides evidence that, given space to develop, these assured Salford lads will find themselves performing to much bigger audiences.

David Stedman has followed the Manchester music scene with keen interest since arriving in the city over ten years ago. A Shropshire native, he has a particular fondness for smaller live venues. He is never happier than when listening to acts that make use of a guitar or keyboard in some way.